I was looking over a workmate’s huge collection of pirated MP3s and I noticed that there was no copy of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s freebird. I had recently witnessed an air guitar championship and the song was weighing on my mind. I asked the owner of the collection if he could swing it my way, and he did.

I have to say: I was a little disappointed. I remember the song rocking a lot more. I thought that it might have had something to do with my recently hitting my late twenties, but then I realised that the last time I had heard this song was when I was sixteen and it would have been during a slow set in the Grove and so, chances are, I was pulling the box of some young one at the time.

And this got me thinking………

Well, no, it didn’t. This is really just an excuse to shoot my mouth off ’cause I can’t think of anything to put up on to my “proper” web site, and pointless nostalgia seems to be the thing, these days… well, always I guess.

Enjoy, the grove social club glossary of pointless nostalgia. If you have anything you’d like to add, feel free to send it to me at daniel@braindelay.com.

Are you wankin’ in there?:
If you were never there then you wouldn’t know that the Grove social clubwas held in the sports hall of Saint Paul’s secondary school in Killester. Being a boy’s school, the toilets were always filthy; being a disco full of young men, drunk on cheap cider, the toilet doors were always kicked in. As a result, unless you were lucky enough to be vomiting you’d need to take a shite in an Ethan Hunt position: standing on one foot to avoid sitting on the crusty bowl with the other foot used to hold the door shut; one hand balancing you against the wall and the other used to hold your shirt down over your mickey for when, after you had been in the shitter for no more than eight seconds a failed garda posing as a bouncer would push the door open and ask you: Are you wankin’ in there?

Bizarre fake ID:
The Grove social club had a lower age limit of fifteen, and so, when I was fourteen, in order to get in I forged a fake ID that said I was sixteen. The Grove social club had no liquor license so you’re probably wondering why I didn’t go the whole hog and pretend that I was eighteen.

So am I.

Cecil:
I have no idea what Cecil’s second name was, or even if his first name was Cecil, but he was the DJ at the grove who had a truly rocking collection of singles that he had built up over thirty odd years of DJ’ing. A collection of original not re-released singles of everything from the Beatles to the Sex Pistols. On the last night of the Grove social club some cunt stole them. I don’t know who you are, but if you’re out there, and you’re reading this: you’re a thieving cunt.

First time:
The Grove social club was my first time for everything that’s important: my first kiss; my first pull of a snatch; the first time I shot my load and it escaped from my pants (to the tune of “Since you’ve been gone”, by Rainbow); the first time I got dumped; the first time I really treated a bird really quite shabbily. Sure, I never had sex there, I was fifteen, but, to be honest, the teenage anticipation when I knew nothing was so much more fun than now, when I know too damn much.

Karmic re-alignment:
Pulling birds in the Grove social club was easiest thing in the world, and it’s quite shocking when I remember the callous nature of it. All you had to was walk up to any largish group of birds and then ask them all, one after the other, if any wanted to dance. They’d all say no, but as soon as you turned your back one would grab you from behind and say “Mary will dance with you”, and they’d push some average looking twist towards you; average looking, but sullen and withdrawn, so it was clear enough that if you weren’t the first you were certainly the first in a while. Then, after a cursory interview of her age, school, taste in music, you’d dive in smooching. After fifteen minutes of this, the slow set would end, and you’d steer her into some dark corner; my favourite was next to the half-dismantled basketball rig behind Cecil. In the dark corner you’d, after half an hour of blunt conversation, you’d go for the red meat with a degree of force, if necesarry, that would have outraged and terrified an adult woman. Next week, you’d do it again: I was this easy; as a result I have absolutely no knowledge of how to talk to real women and so any sex I get is from scrubbers trawled from Coppers or Whelan’s. I’m pretty good at foreplay ‘though.

Lesbians:
A myth, I guess, ’cause I never saw any, but all it took was someone to murmur, “There are a pair of lesbians inside smooching” and everyone would swarm into the hall searching for some split-tailed lovers.

Muirhead whiskey:
Poison, avoid it. In a vague attempt to save some Money I asked my brother, Simon, to buy me a naggin of whiskey instead of some beer. Simon took it upon himself to teach me a lesson and he bought me a half bottle. Am I my brother’s inkeeper? We used to frink in a friend’s house and the retarded chimp, wouldn’t let me drink it there because of the smell and so I had to drink it during the ten minutes it took to wait for the bus and get to the Grove social club. By the time I got inside my body had disappeared and all that was left was a pair of my eyes that floated around; this was my perspective. About fifteen minutes into the night I made a dash for the jacks and, ahlf way there I chickened out and darted out into yard, where I found the cold gravel was the most soothing thins I could have hoped for. Threee things come to mind; although one I had to be told about by a friend:

Lying on my back I was what I thought was a shooting star stop and change direction. I was (god help me) convinced that it was a UFO and had to be calmed down by friends.

(No recollection of this) It seems that when the second slow set started I jumped up onto my feet, spat the last dregs of puke out of my cheeks and ran into the dance hall: nobody knows iuf I scored or not, but it’s very possible, given the skanks that place let in

I slept those saturdays on my friend’s floor. that night I staggered, halkf-carried, into their house and collapsed onto their fold-out foamy bed-thing. I took me a good ten minutes to squeeze into a sleeping bag wirth my friend’s dad standing over me. When I finally god my head down he poked me with his foot and asked My friend if I was on dope. I mumbled, “No, it’s Muirhead…. whiskey”. “Oh”, he said, “That’s okay then”

Violent beating:
Oh Jesus, I saw this: it was hilarious afterwards but at the time it was terrifying and mesemerising at the same time. A poor fucker (who shall remain nameless) had done nothing other than push some crazy ex-girlfriend away from him; by the end of the night chinese whipsers had him raping her.

This was complete nonsense, but it was enough to have a posse of about a hundred keen to kill monkeys encircle this poor bastard and stomp him into hospital. Two moments stick out:

Some guy in a german army surplus Millet’s parka jacket have him such a boot in the chest that it lifted him off the ground.

If that didn’t hospitalise him, then it was probably when some other guy in a black bomber jacker booted him so hard in the head that it lifted him off the ground that did: I remember it was after this that his face was hanging wrong; what with his broken jaw.